San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh made quite a few headlines on Thursday and Friday when he bluntly accused head coach Liam Coen and the Jacksonville Jaguars of sign-stealing during games.
Provocative, considering the two teams face off against each other in Week 4.
Needless to say, those kinds of remarks will garner attention from around the league, and reactions haven't exactly painted the coordinator in the best of light.
For those who didn't read or hear Saleh's comments, here you go:
"Liam and his staff, a couple of guys coming from Minnesota, they’ve got legally, a really advanced signal stealing type system where they always find a way to put themselves in an advantageous situation. They do a great job with it. They formation you to just try to find any nugget they can. So, we’ve got to be great with our signals and we’ve got to be great with our communication to combat some of the tells that we might give on the field. They’re almost elite in that regard."
When asked a follow-up question about the sign-stealing, Saleh elaborated even further with some provocative remarks:
"Whatever nugget they can find, they catch it. They always happen to find themselves in good situations based on the coverage you show. There’s nothing illegal about it. I’m not suggesting that. It’s just, you can tell that they’ve got a can system that’s getting them into a very advantageous position."
To reinforce the point, Saleh stressed it's perfectly "legal' whatever the Jags are doing. This isn't the case of Spygate 2.0, the original controversy made famous by the New England Patriots.
And, interestingly enough, it's certainly not an isolated incident. Teams are no strangers to garnering any competitive advantage possible, so observing both verbal and visual signals is merely a part of the proverbial chess match that exists between offenses and defenses.
So, that prompts the question: Why would Saleh say such remarks? Why now?
Robert Saleh is playing chess game vs. Jaguars with latest remarks
Sports Illustrated's Conor Orr asked around the league about Saleh's remarks, and one conclusion is they were strategic in nature.
Here's what Orr had to say about his findings:
"But what if even mentioning the knowledge of the sign-stealing operation in a public setting was also part of the subterfuge? What if Saleh’s press conference was not an instance of a police officer accidentally tipping off the criminal but leading him to the address of an awaiting SWAT team?
As another coach noted, outside of changing signals, the other way to defeat sign stealing is to create even the thinnest shred of doubt within an opponent in the sign-stealing operation itself. If a quarterback doesn’t get a positive response from the gathered information, inevitably, he’s going to be too scared to trust it."
Putting it simply, Orr is saying Saleh and the Niners are declaring, "We know you know, and now you know we know."
Jacksonville's quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, has historically struggled on the road, going 9-22 over his career, so it's theoretically possible Saleh is tapping into the aforementioned doubt possibly generated by false information.
And there might be a slightly bigger jab since Saleh was one of the finalists for the Jaguars' head-coaching vacancy last offseason before Coen landed it.
That probably didn't factor in at all, though. Or maybe it did.
Perhaps that's the point. Mind games, right? And we'll see if they pay off when the two teams square off on Sunday, Sept. 28 at Levi's Stadium.